Simon Cotton, Managing Director, HRH Group talks about the roadmap to welcoming people back to hospitality in Harrogate.

This week has been one of my favourite weeks in hospitality for a number of years. Whilst it is a tough time for our industry at the moment, the community feel of encouragement and excitement of opening up again for a third time has been overwhelming and the local support and feel good factor on the streets of Harrogate could not fail to warm even the coldest of hearts.

When the Government announced that hospitality would be shutting for third time in January, here at The Yorkshire Hotel we knew that once again when Harrogate was reopened we would have to do something impressive to not only entice customers back but also make an effort to stand out from the crowd with everyone opening at the same time.

When Boris’s roadmap out of the latest lockdown was announced it was a surprise to hear that hospitality would only open outdoors for the first five weeks, limiting the availability of space to serve customers. Boris himself announced that restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars could open in beer gardens but should also look to use their car parks and other available space to create alfresco venues from 12^th April. And whilst a great opportunity, enticing people to come out in the April weather to sit in a car park just doesn’t seem quite sexy enough to get most to venture out and spend money on good food and drink!

I called around a number of friends and business contacts starting with the Richardson Family who own Johnson’s of Whixley, a superb wholesale Nursery. Next I spoke with Phil Airey at Horticap and he introduced me to well-known landscape gardener, Nick Fryer of Nicholas Edwards Gardens to create a vison of what we could do. He far exceeded my initial thoughts on creating a garden and he drew up the most ambitious of plans, some may say the most ambitious car park beer garden in the UK! Several days and meetings stood in the car park later, we had artist David Griffin paint an artist impression complete with a dry stone wall, hills, grass, plants, shrubs, trees and even sheep. The vision was to create the iconic Yorkshire Dales in the heart of Harrogate in front of The Yorkshire Hotel; a fitting alfresco scene for such an iconic location.

This was shared with the hotel’s neighbours and Harrogate Borough Council and the button was quickly pushed to go ahead.

Whilst the sheep are of course ornamental, the rest of the garden uses real plants, trees and shrubs and even a specialist grass called WOW grass, something that is used for many show gardens and is very hardy to lots of footfall and weather conditions. Day one of the build saw HACS construction delivering 120 tons of topsoil as well as over 150 tons of Yorkshire rocks and stone. The landscaping sprung to life as the week progressed with the help of all the companies and individuals involved and the final piece, which many people, including the staff thought I was joking about all the way through, was the arrival of a miniature steam train to complete the vision. It was such a wonder to behold, seeing our vison become reality. People did ask, why the train?....my answer, “why not!”

During the 5 day build we had all four British seasons in one, with at one point fir trees planted in full snow with Phil singing “Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree” going down particularly well on social media! To be honest, half way through that day I wondered what we’d got ourselves into but each day I put out a video clip of the progress and with people messaging asking for the next one when I wasn’t quick enough creating it, I realised we had captured the mood of the town for reopening.

Of course, on opening day the sun shone, the wind, rain and snow stayed away and the Ales in the Dales garden was brimming with chatter, laughter, the clinking of glasses and the faint sound of a miniature steam train tooting up and down. It is wonderful to be able to be open again, trading and serving customers, even if it is only outside for now. But the best part for me is the sound of people enjoying themselves with laughter echoing around a place that for months has been a ghost town. I hope as everywhere else opens in the town, and those who are not as lucky as us to have outdoor space to utilise, do so with great success and our beautiful town bounces back as a wonderful full scale destination for locals and tourists.